Great American Trail

A 3700 mile trail is being built going from Washington D.C. to Washington State, from Atlantic to Pacific Ocean.Realistically, won’t be finished in our lifetime or even our children’s lifetime,(maybe and bit of a stretch, grandchildren’s lifetime), but part of this trail is suppose to go through Pittsburgh,(3 rivers heritage trail) into West Virginia and Ohio.Just curious, does anybody know the route from our city into these 2 States,(Ohio and West Virginia)???

So the idea is to follow the GAP east of the city, but to go west as you are asking, they will have to build a new trail along the Ohio River from downtown Pittsburgh to Coraopolis. From there it will connect to the Montour to McDonald and then to the Panhandle west into Weirton.

I’m very curious how they will do the river crossing at Weirton/Steubenville. I think there is an abandoned bridge or two along that stretch that could be repurposed.

The Route page on this website has a map you can zoom into. They use white rectangles to represent connections where there’s just no specific plan yet. The connection from the Station Square trail to the Montour Trail is one such block.

For Weirton, there are two segments that have advanced to the “planned” stage: A continuation of the Panhandle Trail all the way to the Ohio River following Harmon Creek, and sending the trail over the Ohio River via the old Market Street Bridge connecting East Steubenville to Steubenville. These two pieces appear in actual local planning documents. How they might connect these two pieces, and how the trail might continue west after the Market Street Bridge, is still undetermined.

Just curious, but does anyone have a timeline of when they will extend the part of trail from Station Square to Coraopolis part of Montour Trail that’s suppose to be part of this link of the Great American Trail??

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Pittsburgh-to-Coraopolis is one of the gaps with no plan, so there is no timeline. I think it would be better if the Panhandle Trail was somehow extended to downtown Pittsburgh, maybe along the west busway or along Chartiers Creek.</p>